Work Text:
Lin Ling drops another pack of cat food into his basket, willing himself not to compare the price (537 yuan, god help him) against the sad number he saw when he checked his bank account this morning. He still has a few other things to buy: treats since he ran out, a toy to replace the one Zero dropped into the toilet, a collar because Zero got out one time and his elderly neighbor lectured him for a solid half hour…
Oh, and dinner. For himself. At some point.
He switches the basket to his other hand and checks the time on his phone. 22:37. A little over twenty minutes until the store closes, so enough time to get everything he needs as long as he hurries.
Lin Ling pauses for a moment in the deserted aisle. His eyes burn from staring at his computer for over a dozen hours. Blinking hurts. His back aches, and even the basket in his hand feels like it's filled with rocks instead of cat food. He could, if sufficiently prompted, curl up on the floor here right now and pass out for a minimum of ten hours.
He doesn't want to take another step. He doesn't want to — to do anything at all, actually. Which should be concerning, and maybe it is, a little, registering somewhere in the very back of his mind.
But the fact of the matter is that Zero needs her food and Lin Ling's responsible for her. That means he needs to buy this food. He needs to run to catch the last train to go home. He needs to cobble together something resembling a meal and force himself to eat it despite the risk of falling asleep at the table.
Most importantly, he needs to wake up and go to his job in the morning, because without his job none of the rest of it is possible.
Do it for Zero. It's not her fault you're trapped in a capitalistic hellscape.
Lin Ling knuckles at his bone-dry eyes, like that'll do anything for the crunchy, blurry bullshit fucking up his vision at the moment, then sighs and slides his phone back into his pocket. He hefts the basket into the crook of his arm and sets off for the next aisle.
By the time he's got everything checked off his list, it's fifteen minutes later and the only employee on duty is giving him some serious side-eye from behind the cash register. He's ready to check out, more than ready, god, but—
There's this fish.
And, okay, he knows how that sounds. It's a fish, he's in a pet store, what's there to be excited about?
But this fucking fish.
Lin Ling moves closer to the wall of fish tanks as if possessed. There, beyond his own struck-dumb expression reflected in the glass, is a fish. It's maybe the size of a particularly large goldfish. Silver scales, big, bulging eyes on either side of its triangular face. Pretty, translucent fins that shimmer in the neon backlight of the tank.
What has Lin Ling's attention in a death grip is the — hair. Or whatever white, misshapen growth on top of its head that's grown into the approximation of human hair.
Lin Ling stares at the fish. The fish opens its tiny mouth repeatedly, bubbles streaming out. Lin Ling wrenches his gaze away to look at the cashier. The cashier gives him the stink eye and returns to the magazine she has open on her lap.
He looks back at the fish.
The hair is still there. As Lin Ling watches, the gentle current of the water circulating through the tank makes it ripple like it's in a shampoo commercial. Perfectly wavy, not a strand out of place.
He watches and the fish swims towards the glass, except— except it's weird, it doesn't use its tail fin, it—
The fish has fucking legs.
Tiny, stubby little legs with equally tiny, stubby feet attached to them. The fish walks forward across the gravel at the bottom of the tank. Until it butts its face up against the glass. Bulging eyes staring out sideways but still, somehow, Lin Ling knows it's looking at him.
Staring back.
Am I having a stroke right now?
The stress of work finally getting to him isn't a surprise, but this is not how he expected it to manifest. Because this can't be a real thing he's seeing. His mind balks at the thought of it, twisting in on itself to keep from touching the idea that there's a fish in this pet store tank with hair and legs and feet that is just as mystified about Lin Ling as Lin Ling is about it.
"We don't sell the fish for you to feed them to your cats."
Startled, Lin Ling nearly upends the basket he's holding as he jerkily twists to face the cashier, who's leveling a very impressive judgemental stare at him over the top of her magazine. The overreaction doesn't score him any points given the brow raise and the harsh slant of her mouth.
"I'm not— I wouldn't do that, I just—" Lin Ling runs a hand shakily through his hair, fumbling for an excuse. "What, uh. What kind of fish is this? I've never seen it before."
The cashier narrows her eyes. "The placard below the tank should tell you."
There is indeed a placard below the tank. He sees the price first — whether or not it's expensive he has no idea, the only fish he's ever bought have already been cooked — then the small line of text beneath that, which reads:
Nice fish. Labroides perfectus.
This has to be a joke.
He'd thought the hair looked familiar; did they seriously name a fish after the number fifteen hero because it has his hair?
No, not a joke. A hallucination. That's it. Lin Ling is sleep deprived and he spends entirely too much of his day staring at reference photos of Nice, so now he's… seeing things. Things like Nice's perfectly coiffed hair on fucking fish. Fish with legs. Fish with legs and feet.
He might be sick. He feels his stomach starting to turn, his lunch — fucking fish, too — threatening to make a repeat appearance.
Slowly, Lin Ling turns to the cashier. He forces himself to take a step forward, then another. He's going to buy his things and go home and sleep. Forget dinner, he's not in the mood for it anymore. Once he takes care of Zero for the night he's going to become one with his bed and pretend none of this ever happened.
Three steps from the register, Lin Ling makes the mistake of looking back over his shoulder.
The Nice fish is still staring at him.
Lin Ling places the basket on the counter, smiling awkwardly at the cashier as she rings up his items.
"Um, do you have any pamphlets on like, the basics of taking care of fish?"
Turns out Lin Ling's old good-for-nothing roommate has a use after all.
When he abruptly bailed two days before rent was due, he left behind a lot of things. Most of it was junk Lin Ling tossed when it was clear the guy wasn't coming back, but a handful of things he saved on the off chance he could do something with them. Including a mid-sized fish tank that, until now, Lin Ling's been using to store his winter clothes.
His roommate bought the tank and then proceeded to do such an abysmal job of keeping fish they all died within a month. After that the tank sat empty and grime-covered in the living room area until Lin Ling relegated it to the closet.
Now, after he deep cleans it, fills it with the gravel the cashier recommended, sets up the filter, and lugs it onto the stand that used to hold his TV, Lin Ling admits he can see the appeal. His roommate bought it solely for the aesthetics, from what he remembers; he liked the ocean and aquariums, the sound of running water, and he thought the fish tank would be a decent replacement for that. He was laughably wrong, but Lin Ling does like what it adds to the ambience of his apartment.
He's less certain of his feelings once he drops the Nice fish into it.
Zero seems to like it, at least. Once he's gotten it in all in place, she jumps down from her perch on the top of the cat tree and sits herself in front of the tank to stare up at it rapturously. Wide-eyed, pupils enormous, tail twitching where it rests curled over her paws. The whole nine yards. He'd worry she's planning to fish Nice (he cringes every time he thinks it, but what else is he supposed to call this thing?) out and snack on it, but she's not stalking the tank the way he's seen her do with the birds that roost outside his window.
She just seems to enjoy watching the fish as he trots from one end of the tank to the other.
Nice (fuck his life, really) isn't perturbed, either, from what Lin Ling can tell. His bulgings eyes do watch Zero watching him, but he doesn't dart further into the tank or hide behind the few plastic structures Lin Ling was coerced into buying.
Lin Ling tries to convince himself he's not losing his mind.
It helps that when he wakes up the next morning, Fish Nice is exactly as he left him. Movie-star hair and ridiculous legs and all. Probably not a hallucination, unless he's entered into some long-term psychotic break. And if that's the case, he doesn't think he'd be this, uh, cognizent of it? Like, all this would seem normal, and he wouldn't even question this bizarre addition to his household.
So he's fine. Probably.
Fish Nice is decent company anyway. Sometimes Ling Ling talks to him — talks at him — while he's shaking fish food into the tank with one hand and shooing Zero away with the other. Just stream of consciousness chatting, because he's never liked it when things are too quiet and it's only him and Zero here to fill the silence. She likes to chirp and meow, and he likes to chitchat, however one-sided it is.
He complains about his boss, his co-workers, his unreasonable schedule and all the tasks they get piled on his desk day after day. He talks about never being able to go back to his favorite coffee place after he fumbled his greeting to the barista so badly he asked to switch shifts. He curses out his ex-roommate when he passes the one-month mark of fish ownership and Fish Nice is alive and well.
"I wonder if Trust Value made you like this," Lin Ling wonders aloud as he scrubs out the tank with soap. Nice Fish, in his temporary home on the table next to him, glub-glubs in response. "I mean, it would kinda make sense? Ahu's a talking dog who fights crime… a fish with legs and hair isn't that weird in comparison, right?"
Fish Nice flaps his useless fins.
"Right, right, you don't like Ahu. More of a cat guy, huh? Zero sure likes you, anyway. And yes, Zero, I see you lurking behind the couch. None of your toys are back there, I vacuumed yesterday."
Zero slinks out of her hiding place only to leap onto the table and park herself in front of the oversized glass bowl Fish Nice is occupying. She kneads at the towel the bowl's sitting on, then settles herself on her belly with her nose pressed to the glass, fixated on Fish Nice, as per usual.
Lin Ling rolls his eyes. Nice is her new favorite, apparently. He's not jealous of a fish, but—
He's a little bit jealous of a fish.
It's not Nice who feeds and houses her. Fish Nice is basically her entertainment. She stares at him for hours some days, transfixed. Her eyes tracking him as he paces the perimeter of the tank or hops through the plastic scenery like it's an obstacle course.
It's at least marginally better than her being an iPad baby or whatever, probably. Not that it does much to temper the annoyance that flares up occasionally whenever he sees her cozy up to Nice instead of him, her literal owner and life-giver.
He jokes to himself that it makes sense, if only a little, because Nice — human Nice, hero Nice — is basically responsible for the majority of Lin Ling's paycheck. So, in a way it's like Nice is a provider for her, too, and her obsession with Fish Nice is simply a by-product with that.
It sounds about as insane as the reality of Fish Nice when he says it out load. He tries to keep it in his head when he can these days.
"Speaking of Ahu, though, his recent ad campaign was pretty good." Lin Ling shakes off his thoughts and rolls up his sleeves to continue scrubbing. "Having him as the mascot for that ice cream brand was a stroke of genius. They sell dog-friendly ice cream now, too, and I heard XFC is looking to partner with them for a new flavor. I hope it's not, like, fried chicken, that stuff is never any good."
He glances up out of habit to see that Fish Nice is back to staring at him. Practically smooshing his dumb face against the glass in a mirror of Zero watching him. Lin Ling laughs and ducks his head to wipe his sweat-damp face over his shoulder.
"Maybe you are like Ahu," he muses, chuckling, "you really seem like you're looking at me a lot of the time, not just in my direction. We could make you a superhero, have you fight… uh. Underwater villains? Tiny underwater villains. They probably exist. Somewhere."
Lin Ling's just talking to talk at this point. He'd play music, or a video on his laptop, but honestly he's having trouble concentrating on anything fun these days. Work's been — a lot. Nice went into seclusion for some kind of special training, and while it did give them time to polish up the latest campaign they'd done for him, there's been talk among the higher-ups about whether they'll have their contract with Treeman renewed. Nice's absence hasn't helped any; it makes everyone on Lin Ling's team feel like Treeman is gearing up for a rebranding, and that they're planning to go to another advertising firm to do it.
He… doesn't know what he'll do if that's true. His firm may not survive losing that big a contract, even if Treeman keeps them on for their lower-ranked heroes like Moon.
Lin Ling'll get the axe for sure, though, one way or the other. They'll blame losing Nice's contract on him. He's seen it happen before, and he's not so arrogant to think he's any kind of irreplacable to his boss.
Sighing, Lin Ling drops the sponge he's holding with a wet plop and folds himself over the top of the tank, resting his cheek on his forearm. His eyes flick up to Fish Nice.
"Your namesake better get back out there soon," he murmurs, smiling wryly. "I need this job to take care of you and Zero. So he's gotta do his job and be the hero I made him out to be."
Fish Nice bonks his head into the glass, opens and closes his mouth. Lin Ling huffs a laugh. The anxiety about his future isn't going anywhere any time soon, but it's hard to stay upset looking at this ridiculous creature or his equally enamored cat.
"Glub, glub to you, too, buddy."
The next morning Lin Ling stumbles out of his bedroom to find someone's broken into his place.
His window's been flung open, and nearly every piece of furntiture in the living room's been overturned. Drawers have been yanked out and rifled through, the kitchen cabinets are ajar, and the papers he'd kept on his tiny dining table are scattered everywhere.
"Oh, god." Lin Ling sucks in a sharp breath, fear pooling in the pit of his stomach. His eyes dart around the ruined space, looking for any trace of his cat. He didn't hear her making any noise last night, he would've heard her if she'd started yowling. "Zero? Zero, come here, girl, come on out! Please, please, please come out—"
A chirp answers him from the top of the bookshelf — now sans books. Zero is there, her fur fluffed up and her tail lashing in all directions, claws out and digging into the faux wood. She's safe, though. She's here and she's safe.
Lin Ling doesn't try to force her down; he'll wait until he's cleaned up to try and coax her into her carrier, since he… probably needs to find somewhere else to stay, at least for the night. If he can even afford that. He doesn't have any friends living close by, and he won't be able to crash at the office with Zero in tow, which leaves him with the options of a hotel or nothing.
Best not to think of that of that right now.
Lin Ling stands in the middle of the wreckage, listlessly looking from one piece of overturned furniture to the next. He can't identify at a glance anything that was stolen — the only thing missing is the TV, and he moved that weeks ago when he—
Fish Nice.
The stand he's used to hold the tank is tipped over, the tank cracked and empty on its side. All the water's soaked into the rug Lin Ling spread over the hardwood flooring, so he didn't notice immediately when he walked in. But he sees it now.
What he doesn't see is his fish.
He thinks: a weird fish with legs might be able to survive out of the water for longer.
He thinks: Fish Nice might just be hiding the same way Zero is.
He thinks: there's no way someone broke into his home just to steal my fish.
Hours later, sweaty, exhausted, his hands cut up from sifting through broken glass for any trace of his freak of a pet, he has to conclude that there's nothing missing from his apartment. Nothing at all. His valuables, what few there are, are still here and intact. He'd almost think everything was messed up in an attempt to distract from his missing fish.
Except that would be insane.
Right?
Lin Ling looks at Zero again. She's calmed down some as she's watched him trek through the apartment, righting what he can and tossing what he can't into a trash bag. Now she's staring intently at the wet spot on the floor and the broken fish tank. Her tail droops over the edge of the bookcase, lifeless.
He can't deny it any longer.
"Someone stole my fucking fish, Zero."
Lin Ling mourns for the rest of the day.
He considers putting up flyers, but he doesn't have a reward substantial enough to offer outside of his undying gratitude, and, more pressingly: this is about a fish. No one in their right mind is going to be on the lookout for a fish, no matter how outrageously it's designed.
Besides, is he expecting the kidnapper to be carrying Fish Nice around in a plastic baggy? No, if anything he's locked away in someone's home, forever out of Lin Ling's reach.
(In his darker moments he wonders if Fish Nice is in some government facility being subjected to horrifying experiments for the crime of being so fucking weird.)
So, he mourns, and he mopes, and he cuddles Zero in bed. No point in getting a hotel when the sole reason for the break-in is long gone, he figured.
Zero is upset, too, so he doesn't feel totally crazy for caring so much about his missing fish. She sticks her head into the empty fish tank multiple times, seemingly looking for her friend, and she lets out she awful little cries when she doesn't find him.
They commiserate for the night, huddled together on Lin Ling's bed.
He goes to work the next morning. He can't afford to take a sick day, and even if he could, he doesn't think grieving my stolen fish would justify twenty four hours away from work. Especially not when things with Treeman are still looking so dicey.
He fully intends to keep to himself as much as possible for the day. Sit at his desk and do his work, trying not to stare at the picture on his desk of him, Zero, and Fish Nice he took barely a week ago. Everyone on his team thinks it's a joke — that he edited the hair onto Fish Nice as a tongue-in-cheek thing. The fact that they think it's fake is somehow comforting; a few less people to suspect of breaking into his apartment to make off with a spectacle of a fish, at least.
But not ten minutes after he logs into his email account, he gets a DM from his boss's secretary asking him to meet in the conference room.
Fuck. Maybe he is getting fired after all.
His already dismal mood dips dangerously low as he sighs, dredges up what courage he can, and goes to meet his fate.
Lin Ling's boss is sitting at the head of the conference table when Lin Ling arrives. He barely spares Lin Ling a glance at his greeting, but he does politely ask him to come in and take a seat, which sets off alarm bells in Lin Ling's head. His boss isn't capable of politeness unless they have a bigwig from one of their contracted organizations in the office, and Lin Ling has a sinking feeling he knows which of them might've sent someone.
He looks from his boss — smiling big and plastic and cajoling — to the person sitting across from and for a moment Lin Ling's whole world tips sideways.
He sees only the back of their head. A head of perfectly coiffed white hair.
"Nice," Lin Ling blurts out, wrong-footed.
Oh, fuck, he almost said Fish Nice.
Nice turns, glancing at Lin Ling over his shoulder. He smiles, slow, charming, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
Lin Ling can't move. He feels pinned in place by those piercing blue eyes.
(Normal human eyes, not bulging fish eyes. The distinction shouldn't disappoint him as much as it does.)
"Lin Ling." Nice says his name like a caress, and Lin Ling full-body shivers in a way he prays to god his boss doesn't notice. "I hear a owe a lot to you and your work. You've really helped to build my brand over the years. I'd even say you had a heavy hand in making me the hero I am today. It's great to finally meet you."
"Ah, no, it's really not that much. I mean." Lin Ling swallows, shoving his hands into his pockets before realizing how rude that is and hastily taking them back out to gesture nervously. "You've given me a lot of great stuff to work with, y'know? And you, too! It's great to meet you, too, Hero Nice."
Nice dips his head in a barely-there nod. "Just Nice is fine. I don't like when people put on airs, especially not when we work together often."
Lin Ling furrows his brow. "Ah, but, we don't. We usually talk to your manager or one of Treeman's PR team…"
"I want more of a say in my image," Nice says, shrugging. "So I'll be the one who handles my contract with your firm going forward. And I want you to continue being my point of contact."
Nice is going to be… in charge of his contract? He wants to deal with Lin Ling directly? Lin Ling isn't getting fired?
"Oh," Lin Ling says. It's all there is to say, really. His thoughts have gone to static, buzzing uselessly in his ears. "Okay. That's… I look forward to working with you, then!"
Nice's mouth curves, sly and warm. He really is absurdly handsome. He looks nothing like Lin Ling's strange, wonderful fish. Somehow that only makes Lin Ling miss Fish Nice more.
"Same to you, Lin Ling. Same to you."